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THE QUEST 
FOR HEALTH AND HAPPINESS 



THE QUEST 

FOR 

HEALTH AND HAPPINESS 



BY 



CHAUNCEY J. HAWKINS 

AUTHOR OF 
"THE MIND OF WHITTIER," "WILL THE HOME SURVIVE?' 1 



Happiness and success in life do not depend 
on circumstances, but on ourselves. 

Sib John Lubbock 




THE PILGRIM PRESS 

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 



£ 1 



K0 V 



USRARYof COWGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

DEC 24 1 908 

k Copyrignt £ n try - 
CLASS 0~ XXc No, 
COPY B. 



Copyright, 1908 
By Luther H. Cary 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



THE QUEST FOR 
HEALTH AND HAPPINESS 

SOME GUIDING BASAL PRINCIPLES 

VV HAT was yesterday an abstract science in 
the college classroom is to-day a science of su- 
preme interest to the general public. The quest 
for health and happiness has converted the sci- 
ence of psychology into the most popular of the 
modern sciences. Great movements like the Em- 
manuel Church Movement of Boston, the work 
under Bishop Fallows of Chicago, and similar 
movements in some of the larger churches in 
New York and Brooklyn, numerous mental heal- 
ing and metaphysical clubs, as well as hundreds 
of smaller clubs and classes for the study of 
psychic phenomena, have come into existence 
within a few months. 

Many of these movements are within the 
Christian Church. Their leaders have assumed 
that the work of healing functional disorders, 
as well as moral and spiritual weaknesses, be- 
longs to the Christian minister and as such 
ought to be made a part of the work of the 
Church. 

At first these movements received the hearty 
endorsement of many leading neurologists and 
clergymen, but a large number who at first sym- 



[6] 

pathized with this movement are beginning to 
feel that the treatment of nervous disorders, 
even under the constant guidance of a physician, 
is altogether too complicated to be undertaken 
by the clergy; that while many cures might be 
obtained, much harm might also result even 
under the best trained psychologists, and espe- 
cially is the feeling growing that the clergy 
should not commit the Church to this movement 
since the medical profession is awake to this 
great question and is introducing into the 
medical school the study of psychology in its 
relation to disease. 

No man can be a specialist in more than one 
subject, and any work the minister may do in 
the treatment of functional disorders must in 
the end suffer in comparison with the work done 
by the trained physician who combines with 
his knowledge of psychology his knowledge of 
medicine. 

If, however, it is not wise to commit the Church 
to such a large movement as the one outlined by 
Dr. Worcester or Bishop Fallows, the very 
chaotic condition of the American mind makes 
it imperative that the leaders of thought should 
take some decisive action. Nothing could be 
more striking to the student of this question 
than the marked contrast between the attitude 
of the general public of Paris or Berlin toward 
psychotherapy and that of the American pub- 
lic. Here in America the attitude is either one 
of wonder over what seem such unaccountable 
cures or one of unqualified and almost fanatical 
devotion to some new and startling creed or 
philosophy. In Europe people regard the ques- 



[7] 
tion with a calm and judicial mind, considering 
it simply as one of the forces to be used by the 
physician. Our public has been educated by 
Mrs. Eddy and Dowie, both as far removed 
from the scientific spirit as could be imagined. 
There the public has been led by Libeault, Bram- 
well, Bernheim, and hosts of thoroughly trained 
psychologists and physicians. The pathos is 
not in the fact that thousands of our people 
have followed the healing cults but that they do 
not know that what they accomplish by a partic- 
ular religious dogma is being accomplished more 
satisfactorily in the quiet, unostentatious way of 
science. If all the ardent followers of the heal- 
ing cults could spend a few months going 
through certain clinics in London, Paris, Berlin, 
Moscow, or St. Petersburg, where psychology 
is used in the treatment of disease they would 
be amazed to see cures wrought without the aid 
of medicine which they thought could only be 
wrought by their particular philosophy or reli- 
gion. If these ardent followers of the cults 
could sit for a few days in the public clinics of 
Dr. Berillon, of Paris, and see hundreds throng- 
ing there, or in the private office of Dr. Bram- 
well, of London, as men go here to the healers, 
and see the sick undergo treatment divested of 
all mysticism and religious jingoism, but in the 
most scientific temper known to the modern psy- 
chologist, and see a larger percentage healed 
than can be legitimately claimed by any cult, it 
would be impossible for these people to return 
in their blind devotion to any particular healing 
art. This end can be accomplished by a proc- 
ess of education and unless the physician and 
the public educator, including the minister, are 



[8] 

to assume that the American people are by 
nature faddish and inherently gullible it is time 
that they began such an educational campaign 
to bring some order out of the present chaos, to 
save men and women from the exaggerations of 
the healing cults, and to promote conditions of 
greater health and happiness. 

If two facts concerning disease could be estab- 
lished in the minds of all men much of the vague- 
ness concerning the healing of disease through 
moral and spiritual forces would disappear. 
First, people should know that there is no such 
thing as an imaginary disease. It is time that 
men ceased to declare that no diseases are healed 
by moral or spiritual forces ; that wherever such 
cures are reported they are on people who are 
weak, only imagining that they are sick. 

There is no such thing as an imaginary dis- 
ease. No man ever suffered from a disease which 
had no existence. There is, however, such a 
thing as a disease of the imagination, and it is 
as real as any other disease. Our infirmaries 
are filled with these sufferers, and thousands of 
men and women are dragging themselves about 
homes where abuse often meets them instead of 
sympathy, because their friends do not realize 
the nature of their trouble. When we can teach 
men that a disease of the imagination is as real 
as a cancer of the stomach, indeed may be the 
source of more actual suffering, then, instead of 
wasting our energy in abusing a blindly groping 
cult for curing occasionally one of the demon 
possessed, we shall be prepared to treat these 
sufferers as they should be treated and to take 
them to physicians who know the art of healing 
the mind as well as the body. 



[9] 

In the second place, people must learn to make 
a distinction between the symptom and the cause 
of a disease. The failure to make this distinc- 
tion has given rise to most of the error and 
fanaticism concerning the relation of mind to 
disease. The common assertion of the adherent 
of the healing cult is that he knows that organic 
disease, such as paralysis, has been healed by 
faith. What he actually means is, that he knows 
some person who could not walk who has been 
healed. In other words, he fails to make any 
distinction between the cause and the symptom 
of a disease. What he does not know is, that a 
person may not be able to walk, use the arms, 
talk, hear, or see; may have symptoms in the 
stomach which make him think he has a tumor 
or cancer, or symptoms about the heart which 
suggest organic heart trouble, and yet the 
causes of these diseases may be mental, moral, 
or spiritual. 

These are facts with which every student of 
the psychology of disease is familiar. Here is 
the record of a woman who had been paralyzed 
for a long time. She was a familiar sight in her 
town. She had lost the use of her limbs and 
every one supposed that she was hopelessly par- 
alyzed. It was necessary to push her about in a 
wheel-chair. No clearer case of paralysis could 
certainly be produced. She was taken to M. Des- 
pine, a celebrated hypnotist in France. No 
sooner did he place her in the hypnotic state 
than she jumped and ran about as though noth- 
ing was the matter with her. During these hyp- 
notic states, M. Despine says, she " even became 
one of our best swimmers. She could dive, swim 
on her back, and do all the other tricks of dex- 



[10] 

terity in that kind of exercise." When she was 
aroused from this state she was as helpless as 
ever. She could neither walk nor move her limbs. 
It is perfectly evident that it was a case of func- 
tional paralysis having its cause in a condition 
of the mental life. 

In the State of Massachusetts there was a 
woman who had not spoken above a whisper for 
years. Physician after physician had failed to 
help her. One day a physician who had been 
treating her without success was called to treat 
her for another trouble. The woman could not 
make herself heard this day, her whisper was so 
feeble. The physician asked her to whisper 
louder that he might hear her. She did so. 
Then it flashed through the mind of the physi- 
cian, though this was before the time that men 
thought of the relation of mind to disease, If 
you can whisper louder what prevents you from 
talking? He thought a moment and then with 
great confidence he assured the woman that he 
had finally discovered the cause of her loss of 
voice, and as confidently he affirmed that in a 
few minutes he would cure her. Placing his 
thumbs firmly on her throat he gave it a quick 
jerk. " There," he said, " did you hear it 
crack?" "Yes," replied the woman in aston- 
ishment. " Now you can talk," he confidently 
affirmed, and she did talk. From the point of 
view of medicine that was quackery; from the 
point of view of psychology it was good practise. 
For years she had thought and her friends had 
believed that she was suffering from some ter- 
rible organic disease. The thing from which she 
had been suffering was a terrible mental disease. 

Probably the largest number of cures wrought 



[11] 

by the healing cults are associated with the dis- 
orders of the stomach. People lose their ap- 
petites, are unable to retain their food after 
eating, suffer from dyspepsia, are tormented by 
terrible pains in the stomach and are amazed to 
find themselves healed in a day by some healer 
or after some course of religious or moral in- 
struction. There is nothing to cause surprise in 
the fact that men think that they have been re- 
lieved from some stubborn organic trouble, and 
that they should regard these cures as marvel- 
ous. The pity is that they do not know that 
a large percentage of dyspeptic troubles have 
a mental cause, that all of these conditions 
of the stomach may grow out of a condition 
of the mind. Sometimes the most skilled phy- 
sician is not able to detect whether the cause 
of the trouble is in a condition of the mind 
or in a disease of the organ. If all men could be 
made to understand this fact, most of the talk 
about the marvelous cures of organic disease by 
mental and spiritual forces would disappear. 
People have called every disease organic which 
has had certain symptoms, and the cure of these 
diseases by other than medical means has seemed 
miraculous. The people are not to be blamed. 
The censure must rest first upon physicians, then 
upon teachers and ministers for not making 
clear to the people that all these symptoms may 
arise from mental or moral forces. When they 
do understand this fact they will be able reason- 
ably to account for the occasional cure of dis- 
ease outside of the regular medical means, and 
the fanaticism which would make mind a cure for 
all disease will gradually dissolve before a rea- 
sonable science. 



[12] 

Again, before people can think sanely on 
this question it must be made clear that the 
cure of certain diseases by moral and spirit- 
ual forces is independent of any philosophy of 
life or creed of religion. Cures are wrought 
by Christian Science healers, faith and men- 
tal healers, Roman Catholic relics, Buddhist 
and Mohammedan priests, Lutheran and Episco- 
palian clergymen. No one of these creeds has 
any advantage over another in the curing of 
disease. They all cure disease and they all fail 
to cure. Sometimes people who have tried the 
faith and mental healers and have found no re- 
lief will be cured by the Christian Science healer 
and vice versa. If these cures depended upon 
any particular creed of religion one would be 
more successful than another, but this is not 
true. In those classes of diseases where cures 
are wrought there are the same percentage of 
cures by all the methods. Indeed, those who 
have no religion are successful in curing disease. 
Dr. DuBois is a materialist in his philosophy 
of life, yet only a few days are required in his 
clinics to enable one to see that he accomplishes 
by psychological methods results quite as mar- 
velous as those wrought by the most fervent 
Christian Science healer. Drs. Jenet and Beril- 
lon, of Paris, and Dr. Tuckey, of London, make 
no use of religion in their practise, yet they are 
all successful in the healing of the sick by mental 
forces. 

These facts force us to the conclusion that 
these cures are independent of any particular 
philosophy or religion. Some men are cured 
by one religious faith while others are cured of 
the same disease by no faith. It must be self- 



[13] 

evident to the person who faces these facts with 
unprejudiced mind that these cures are accom- 
plished by forces which reside in the mind and 
that the religious creed or philosophy of life is 
only a means to bring these forces into action. 
Not until men understand this fundamental prin- 
ciple will they be able to consider this entire sub- 
ject of psychotherapy in a scientific temper of 
mind, freeing themselves from all mysticism and 
exaggeration. 

We do not marvel that the popular mind, 
under present conditions, should see something 
supernatural in the healing cults. When we re- 
call how public quacks will hypnotize men and 
leave them exposed for days to the public gaze, 
as has often happened at our sea resorts, and 
the absurd actions which public performers com- 
pel hypnotized people to execute, we need not 
wonder that those unacquainted with the laws 
of psychology should associate these things with 
magic and even the miraculous. If it is difficult 
to dispel an illusion from the popular mind con- 
cerning such a simple thing as hypnotism, it is 
even more difficult to dissociate the phenomena 
of the healing cults from the supernatural and 
the miraculous. Many of the healing cults claim 
to work their wonders of healing through 
miraculous agencies, and when men see disease 
cured without the aid of medicine it is easy for 
them to believe that some divine force interferes 
with the working of natural law and performs 
a miracle. 

Men will not be freed from this superstitious 
thought until they can first see that the cure of 
disease without medical aid has been practised 
in all ages, by priests and kings, by men of reli- 



[14] 

gion and men with no religion, and that at the 
present time cures are wrought by believers and 
unbelievers, by the skeptic, the materialist, the 
agnostic, the orthodox, and the heterodox. 
When men once understand this simple fact, 
then one healing cult will have no more value 
than another, and men will go for the healing 
of their diseases not only to those who can stimu- 
late their minds and call into activity all of their 
mental powers but also to those who know as 
much about the body as they do about the mind. 

The American has often been accused of lack- 
ing entirely the historical sense, and never has 
he manifested that mental deficiency more clearly 
than in labeling the healing cults " new." When 
Christianity was introduced into Rome it met 
a healing cult that had not only won the admira- 
tion of the Romans but had spread all over the 
West. People traveled from all parts of the 
Roman world to the famous sanatoriums of 
iEsculapius as they travel to-day to Lourdes or 
to the Mother Church of the Christian Scientists 
in Boston. They came bringing their costly 
gifts and dedicating their lives to this new cult 
that they might be healed of the diseases of body 
and mind. 

That Christianity might meet successfully 
this pagan healing cult which was exerting 
such a wide influence throughout the civilized 
world, Origen, with his characteristic shrewd- 
ness, pointed out that, while JEsculapius might 
have the power to heal diseases, " such curative 
power is of itself neither good nor bad, but 
within reach of godless as well as of honest folk. 
. . . The power of healing diseases is no evi- 
dence of anything specially divine." 



[15] 

There is no hope that people will think sanely 
upon this great question until something shall 
quicken their historical sense, until they can see 
that there is nothing new in this movement, that 
the healer has been associated with every reli- 
gion from the most primitive type to the most 
advanced, that kings of all nations down to 
comparatively recent times have healed as well 
as priests, and that scarcely a century in the 
Christian period has been without several types 
of healing cults. When men begin to see that 
the healing of certain diseases through mental 
forces is independent of any religion and is as 
wide in its history as the history of the race, 
then will they be in a position to think sanely 
on this question. 



THE MENTAL CAUSES OF SUFFERING 

1 HERE is a vague idea throughout our com- 
munities that mind has some remote relation to 
disease, but just what this relation is remains a 
mystery. It is this atmosphere of mystery which 
invites all kinds of exaggerated notions and 
vague theories concerning the relation of mind 
to health and happiness, and not until the physi- 
cian and the minister can make clear to men the 
relation of the mental and moral life to the 
cause of disease can people escape from this 
atmosphere of mystery and think sanely upon 
the connection of mind with the cure of disease. 
While in our last chapter we tried to show that 
it is not the function of the clergy to undertake 
the treatment of disease after the example of 
the Emmanuel Movement, that such an attempt 
would be both a calamity to the people and to 
the churches, we do believe that the church can- 
not be true to its mission without incorporating 
into its teaching function some of those prin- 
ciples which will enable people to understand 
better why they suffer and how they may have 
both better health and greater happiness. 

First, it should be made clear that men suffer 
because they sin. It was humiliating to stand 
in some of the large clinics of Europe and 
hear physicians of international reputation de- 
liver homilies to men on the relation of their 
sinful living to the state of their health and 
happiness, and then recall how little that theme 



[17] 

had found place in our Christian pulpits. The 
simple fact is that the world to-day is being 
filled with nervous wrecks, with sufferers not 
only in body but also in mind, because the world 
is being filled with sinners, because men behave 
themselves disorderly toward God and their fel- 
low beings, and because they live irrationally. 
While men are forgetting God in their haste 
to build huge barns, God is crying to our age 
through overflowing nervines and rapidly in- 
creasing nervous disorders, " Ye fools, this 
very day your souls are being required of you 
for your sinful greed," and while men are busy 
talking of the " new disease " which they proudly 
term "Americanitis," nervousness, they are for- 
getting that one of the chief causes behind neu- 
rasthenia, melancholia, and other nervous types 
is private and domestic sin. 

Certainly it is time that the Church had a 
more definite message concerning the relation 
of mind to disease, — a message which will re- 
veal to men the relation of an intemperate and 
godless home to degenerate and nervous chil- 
dren, of alcoholism to babeless mothers and 
bottle babies, of the relation of sin of many 
types to the host hastening to infirmaries and 
hospitals and the larger host suffering in their 
own homes from demons. A day spent in 
infirmaries crowded with young men and old, 
with women of all ages, and an inquiry into the 
cause which led them there, would throw a flood 
of light upon the threadbare theme of the rela- 
tion of sin to the holiness of God and result in 
more holiness and health among men. 

If multitudes suffer because they sin, others 
suffer because they are abnormally susceptible 



[18] 

to suggestion. If the amount of money paid 
each year to doctors by those who have per- 
mitted their minds to become diseased by the 
constant suggestion of disease could be gath- 
ered it would solve the entire question of for- 
eign missions. We all become tired, but we 
know that in a little while we will be rested. In 
our normal condition this does not disturb us. 
But it is far different with the person who is 
highly suggestible. She sees grave consequences 
as a result of that feeling. She knows that she 
is going to succumb. She goes to bed, or she 
weeps and goes into hysterics. The tired feeling 
was enough to suggest to her a whole train of 
terrible diseases. 

Slight pains frequently dart through the body 
of the strongest man, but the man in normal 
conditions will think nothing of them. Some- 
times there is a gastric trouble, or a slight pain 
about the heart, or a transient neuralgia. But, 
confident in our health, we keep right on. Not 
so with the hypochondriac. Each slight pain of 
the heart tells her that she has a heart trouble. 
A slight gastric trouble is enough to foretell 
tumors or cancers. She has such an exagger- 
ated capability for suggestion that the slightest 
pain near the heart will convince her that she 
has an organic disease of that organ. The mere 
thought of this possibility is ludicrous to the 
average person, and it would be an insult to the 
sufferer to tell her the real cause of her suffer- 
ing, but every physician acquainted with psy- 
chology knows the awful power of suggestion, 
and the physician and the minister ought to 
hasten to instruct men in the relation of sug- 
gestion to health, happiness, and conduct. 



[19] 

The desire of the American to take some 
" cure " is being utilized for commercial pur- 
poses by the keen European. One village in 
Switzerland has recently voted a million francs 
to build a large hydropathic establishment for 
Americans. Their argument was that eighty- 
five per cent of their visitors were Americans 
and " the fad of taking some ' cure ' during the 
summer had been growing with them during the 
last few years. They frequently can spare only 
two or three days for Interlaken because they 
must pass three or four weeks of their summer 
wherever they take the ' cure.' We want them 
to stop here for those three or four weeks." 

The fact is that few of us know how sugges- 
tible we are, and the constant talk of disease 
for the past few years has suggested to hundreds 
that they were sick, that there was something 
wrong with their minds or bodies, until we have 
become a nation of faddists on " cures." Con- 
tradictory as it may seem, the best psycho- 
therapy for many people at the present hour 
would be no psychotherapy at all. What we 
need more than anything else at this time is a 
critical attitude of mind and a normal mental 
poise which will enable us to preserve our good 
sense and to assure our mental and physical 
health. 

Scores of people have come to us after lec- 
tures on the subject of psychotherapy who have 
revealed an abnormal attitude of mind which is 
not only pathetic but alarming. They are peo- 
ple who have been perfectly well in body and 
mind and who only need to live a normal life of 
faith and hope to maintain their health and 
sanity. But there has been so much talk about 



[20] 

mind and disease that they have come to think 
that they are victims of some mental defect or 
that there are possibilities of peace and strength 
which might be attained by some mysterious 
secret if they could only discover it, and their 
minds have been unsettled by this popular and 
morbid delusion. By the power of suggestion, 
which they absorb unconsciously from the mental 
atmosphere of our time, they have become sick 
souls madly in pursuit of a spiritual mirage. 
Unless they can brace themselves against these 
suggestions by a reasonable and somewhat crit- 
cal attitude of mind, they are destined to find 
themselves victims of misery rather than hap- 
piness and a morbid weakness rather than 
strength. 

The psychology of the emotions and the rela- 
tion of the emotions to health and happiness is 
a field almost untouched except in the most 
general way by the teaching of the Church. The 
phenomena of blushing, the effect of shame upon 
the circulation of the blood, of fear upon the 
beating of the heart, are only familiar outward 
signs which should lead to the deeper study of 
the relation of strained conditions between hus- 
band and wife to their health, of the relation of 
unbelief to the condition of the body, and of 
pessimism not only to happiness but to the cir- 
culation and digestion. 

A thorough study of the emotions would give 
the Church some message for the constant 
theatergoer or novel reader, for the religious 
fanatic or social fop who contribute such a large 
class of sufferers to the world, sufferers so easily 
detected after a few moments of conversation by 
their exaggerated impressionability, their ab- 



[21] 

normal mentality, a lack of logic where feelings 
dominate the reason and the will, and who are 
characterized by sleepless nights or divers pains 
or general weakness. The terrible consequences 
of emotional shocks, which result in the disor- 
ganization of consciousness and the unbalancing 
of mind — shocks which result not only from 
fright, but also from fits of anger and jealousy 
— are themes not only for the technical treat- 
ment given to them by Prince and Jenet, but 
also b} r the minister who touches closely those 
who suffer from these conditions. 

If it is true, as the psychologists are telling 
us, that every emotional state produces some 
corresponding change in the body, then not only 
is it true that bad stomachs cause bad tempers, 
but also that nothing troubles the functioning 
of the stomach like moody dispositions. It is 
as impossible to live in an atmosphere where 
there are strained relations between husband and 
wife, where there is jealousy, constant bursts of 
anger, or violent tempers as it is to live in a 
house where every window is sealed and no air 
can enter. 

If domestic troubles stand first in the list of 
mental causes of sickness and suffering, worry 
probably stands second. Properly regulated 
brain-work no more leads to nervous disease 
than hard manual labor leads to a disease of the 
muscles. Indeed, it is so far from injuring the 
nerves that it is one of their greatest sources 
of strength and one of their best safeguards 
against neurasthenia. The increase of nervous 
suffering is not dependent upon the rush of 
modern business life nor is it a trouble peculiar 
to America. The greatest number of cases of 



[ 22 ] 

nervousness in proportion to the population 
come from the provincial parts of Sweden, where 
life is very simple and tranquil, and it is found 
as much in London or Paris as in New York 
or Boston. It is not due to hard work, that is, 
under the proper conditions and with proper 
nourishment, but to the unmitigated evil of 
worry, together with causes which we have 
already mentioned. 

Even more important for the teaching of the 
Church is the necessity of showing the value of 
a vital religious life for health and happiness. 
If men could lead a simple, childlike, religious 
life, rid of all morbid feeling and desires, they 
would need no better psychotherapy. Religion 
is nothing if it is not the act by which the soul 
of man tries to purify and heal itself by seek- 
ing fellowship with the Spirit from which it 
draws its existence. Where this vital act of the 
soul which we call prayer is lacking there is no 
religion; wherever it is found, though in the 
lowest and most ignorant man, there is a genu- 
ine religion. It is because of this fact that 
many of the ethical clubs and esthetic move- 
ments are not properly religious. They do not 
include the principle of prayer. Much of the 
so-called orthodox religion of the present day, 
and of the so-called liberal religion, are not 
religions at all. They are only elaborate philos- 
ophies of religion. Born in the spirit of con- 
troversy or in the critical atmosphere, they were 
never anything but abstractions, artificial and 
dead creations. They leave God and man apart, 
with no vital attitude of the soul toward God, 
and no real communion of the soul with the 
source of life and health. 



[23] 

Wherever a genuine religious life is found 
there are found the best conditions for the healthy 
mind and body. When a little child wakes at 
night and sees a strange man standing by the 
bed perspiration stands on its brow, its mouth 
becomes dry, muscles tense, the heart beats 
faster, and the appetite is lost. If it wakes and 
sees the mother with good food, the pulse and 
appetite are normal and the muscles are natural. 
Fear throws the machinery out of gear, while 
faith makes it act to its best advantage. It 
would make no difference whether the strange 
man was a straw man or a real man. Not the 
object of fright but the fright disarranges the 
normal action of the body. This is only a 
parable of the function of religion for health. 
Fear, from whatever source it comes, affects 
the circulation, the digestion, and the nerv- 
ous system. The life of faith creates the only 
atmosphere in which man can live at his best. 

In a time when so much is being made of 
suggestion and auto-suggestion, is it not op- 
portune for the Church to declare that whatever 
else prayer may be it is auto-suggestion under 
the most favorable circumstances? The man in 
prayer is quiet, calm, absent-minded to all that 
can disturb because he is in communion with his 
God. In other words, he is in an attitude which 
every successful practitioner of psychotherapy 
regards as absolutely necessary before sugges- 
tion can become effective. When man is in this 
attitude, every petition is an unconscious auto- 
suggestion, and the more faith behind the peti- 
tion, the more childlike it is, the more powerful 
it is as auto-suggestion. 

Furthermore, prayer creates an attitude of 



[24] 

mind and condition of spirit in which alone cer- 
tain diseases can be overcome and harmony of 
body and mind restored. The recognition of 
these facts doubtless led Professor James to say, 
" If any medical fact can be considered to stand 
firm, it is that in certain environments prayer 
may contribute to recovery and should be en- 
couraged as a therapeutic measure." 



THE ENRICHMENT OF PASTORAL 
WORK 

1 ASTORAL work does not occupy the con- 
spicuous place in the life of the ministry that it 
formerly did. The minister often complains that 
it is the most uninteresting part of his occupa- 
tion, and we need not wonder at this when we 
recall how much of it consists in ringing door- 
bells and talking about the baby and the weather 
— a business which is enough to turn the entire 
ministry into neurasthenics. On the other hand, 
many people are not anxious for the pastoral 
call because they feel that the minister has noth- 
ing to offer that cannot be given by some friend 
or neighbor more intimately connected with the 
family than is the pastor. This situation has 
not arisen because the minister has no desire 
to help men or because men do not want 
his help, but because in the loss of the older 
motives for pastoral work, when the minister 
regularly called upon his people, read the Bible, 
and prayed with each one, no new point of 
contact has been found by which the minister 
can make religion a thing of vital interest and 
supreme importance to those upon whom he 
calls. 

It would be as fallacious to believe that psy- 
chotherapy would give such a point of contact 
for every person as it is to believe that mind is 
a cure for all diseases to which man is subject, 
but we do believe that it will furnish a point 



[26] 

of contact with many sufferers and men and 
women with burdened souls, and hence enable the 
pastor to be a veritable priest who will bring 
God near to those who need the comforts of 
religion. 

Many men are going about our communities 
to-day telling how God wrought a miracle and 
healed them. All this means is that they were 
awakened out of their sluggish, morbid, fearful, 
anxious manner of living, which kept their whole 
mental and physical life in disorder, by a faith 
in God which was vital, bringing to them joy 
and peace, and these in turn gave their physical 
functions, such as circulation and digestion, an 
opportunity to work as they should. In one 
sense God healed them; in another sense they 
healed themselves. It was their faith which en- 
abled them to live naturally and normally and 
hence made possible the normal action of their 
physical functions. 

Nothing is clearer in modern psychology than 
the fact that fear, jealousy, anger, worry, have 
a disordering effect upon body and mind, and 
that faith, love, and hope afford the only atmos- 
phere in which we can live at our best. The 
man who enters the faith-state, which casts out 
all worry and fear and bad temper, which cre- 
ates courage, hopefulness, and cheerfulness, 
which gives a sense of the new and beautiful 
cleanness of the world, creates an atmosphere 
where the unconscious activities of the body 
work to their best advantage. This is the best 
preventive against disease. Under such condi- 
tions disease once contracted can most easily 
be driven away. 

When these simple facts are understood by 



[27] 

both pastor and people many a weary hour of 
pastoral gossiping may be turned into an hour 
of genuine religious conversation and earnest 
prayer. Our parishes contain many people bom 
with causes which predispose them to nervous 
disorders, people with high nervous tension al- 
ways on the verge of breaking in health and 
passing over into the world of sufferers. So 
long as they can control themselves they are 
men of great activity and usefulness, but the 
moment they lose self-control they suffer beyond 
all others. If they could be taught the secret 
of quiet prayer, of restful meditation, of com- 
muning with the Good and the Beautiful and 
the Reasonable until they felt themselves at one 
with God, no better medicine could be given to 
them. 

Other men are suffering because they have not 
learned the secret of losing life to find it, be- 
cause they are selfish, constantly thinking of 
themselves, brooding over their miserable state. 
They need some one to stimulate their benevo- 
lent and altruistic feelings and practical efforts. 
Still other men can only be led to a normal and 
healthy life by the remaking of their characters. 
This is not only true of those who have destroyed 
their health and happiness through alcoholic 
drinks, opium, or immoral practises, but of 
many victims of an unbalanced emotional life, 
exaggerated suggestibility, and fixed ideas. 
The task of making them healthy and happy is 
nothing less than the task of regenerating their 
lives. When the minister in his pastoral visit 
can bring his Christian faith into vital connec- 
tion with these people he has not only found a 
point of contact by which religion can be made 



[28] 

real to men, but has made himself an indispen- 
sable factor in the life of the community. 

It has been exceedingly unfortunate that 
there has been such a wide separation in many 
communities between the work of the minister 
and that of the physician. The minister who 
has been the companion of the sick room and 
who in the past has often taken medicine to the 
soul which was quite as effective as the drug 
administered to the body, has in these latter 
days too often been excluded from the chamber 
of suffering by the physician. At the very hour 
when men have needed most peace of mind and 
comfort of soul, when good medicine would have 
been hope and faith and prayer, the minister 
has been denied the privilege of giving this 
medicine or, too often, if admitted to the pres- 
ence of the sufferer, it has been grudgingly. 

The physician ought to be not only the ad- 
viser, but the leader in the treatment of all dis- 
ease. We cannot emphasize too often that it 
will be a calamity to the Church if the clergy 
undertake the complicated task of treating any 
type of physical disorder, even under the con- 
stant guidance of the physician. But we must 
declare that it is an equal calamity when the 
physician ignores the important work which the 
minister may contribute to the sick and suffer- 
ing. If prayer without any medicine is the 
foolishness of a misdirected faith, medicine with- 
out any prayer is the blunder of a blind mate- 
rialism. Not until the man of physical science 
can unite with the minister of spiritual religion 
can we hope for the best results to mind and 
body. 

A knowledge of psychology in relation to 



[29] 

health and happiness may also augment the 
work of the pastor in other directions. As we 
sat in one of the large clinics in Paris and saw 
scores of degenerate types of children treated 
in an effective manner, we could not refrain from 
reflecting upon the many fathers and mothers 
who had come to us as pastors of Christian 
churches to solicit our aid in the treatment of 
similar children, and how with a feeling of utter 
helplessness we had gone about those delicate 
tasks in the most ineffective and bungling way ; 
and as we saw these physicians who had no in- 
terest in the Church, no religious experience, and 
who would classify themselves as freethinkers, 
curing children of the habit of lying, stealing, 
and immoral practises, awakening in boys and 
girls a new interest in their school work and in 
life, we were compelled to say, Here are men who 
are doing what Christian pastors should have 
been doing long ago. 

The most interesting discovery in the realm 
of psychology during the last generation has 
been the power of suggestion in the education 
of the child. Men skilful in this science are not 
only able almost invariably to cure children with 
moral perversity of different kinds, but also chil- 
dren contrary, sullen, disobedient, and abnor- 
mally ungovernable. With children who are so 
self-conscious that the mind becomes a blank 
under the least embarrassment, who cannot con- 
centrate thought or attention, unnaturally slug- 
gish or stupid, easily confused, suggestion may 
be employed to awaken the intellect, give more 
self-reliance, or arouse mental alertness. 

This is not an exaggerated claim that idiots 
may be converted into sages or imbeciles into 



[30] 

poets. Suggestion cannot surmount what has 
been given to the organism by heredity nor 
prove effective beyond the intelligence of the 
child. It does not create any new faculties, but 
only calls into activity what already lies dor- 
mant. But within the limits where suggestion 
can be made effective it is no longer a theory. 
It has been reduced to a science, and as such has 
put at the disposal of the minister in his pas- 
toral work a new force which may enable him 
to do well what he has previously done imper- 
fectly and to save children whom he has too 
many times seen slip from his grasp in spite of 
all his efforts for them. 

But even more valuable is the important work 
of the pastor in teaching men how to apply 
a few principles of psychology to their own lives. 
An earnest pastor who is speaking on these prin- 
ciples has the following statement in an an- 
nouncement of the lectures he is giving to his 
people : " These talks will be a plain study of 
the religious life in the light of modern psychol- 
ogy. They will seek to bring the latest facts to 
bear upon the problems of life. I have found in 
my own personal experience that this way of 
approach to spiritual truth has been of greatest 
help, bringing to my own life a strength and 
joy that I have often longed for but never before 
have had." There are many men to-day who 
could give similar testimonies. The application 
of the principles of suggestion and auto-sugges- 
tion, the use of good and wholesome thinking, of 
hopeful and cheerful living, of faith and prayer, 
have brought to their own lives a new strength 
and j oy. Many other men are searching for the 
light, and he who can first apply these principles 



[31] 

to himself and then go from home to home teach- 
ing men to live rationally and well would do a 
work for which every community to-day is 
waiting. 

This type of work is not without serious 
dangers. Already the criticism has been made, 
and justly, that this entire movement in the in- 
terest of the mental and spiritual treatment of 
disease is in danger of degenerating into a type 
of introspection which may be as harmful as 
was the self-examination under the old emotional 
evangelism. A molluscous faith that goes about 
serenely babbling that God is good and God is 
all, while the devil has his hold upon the greater 
part of our social and political and much of our 
domestic life, takes the virility out of religion. 
The faith that only sits in an easy chair holding 
sweet communion with its God makes man see 
life in a distorted way and weakens that strong 
aggressiveness which is the basis of all sane and 
healthy living. If we are not careful in our 
application of these principles to pastoral work 
we may have not only more sick men but also 
more useless men in the world than we had before 
this movement began. 

Furthermore, men who attempt to apply these 
principles to pastoral work will be confronted 
with the constant danger of defeating the very 
object which they desire to attain. In every 
community are nervous, hysterical people who 
have a delight in publicity, who have a morbid 
desire for sympathy, and who find their greatest 
delight in resting their burdens upon others. 
These symptoms are a part of their disease. 
They are sufferers who have lost their self-reli- 
ance, and if the minister is not extremely careful 



[ 32] 

not only will he permit them to consume his time 
and energy, but he will actually become a stum- 
bling-block in the way of their recovery. The 
constant aim of every minister who uses psy- 
chotherapy in his pastoral work must not be to 
carry the burdens of others, but to build the will 
and personality of every man to throw aside or 
to carry his own burdens. 



THE CURE OF THE DRUNKARD 

1 HERE is scarcely a social evil which offers 
more perplexing problems to the ministry than 
intemperance, and there is scarcely a social or 
individual sin more stubborn in its resistance to 
all known redemptive forces employed by the 
minister than chronic alcoholism and dipso- 
mania. A deep and radical conversion of the 
type which comes from the intensely emotional 
revival or from the Salvation Army meeting 
often results in a temporary and sometimes in 
a permanent cure of this moral disease, but these 
are ineffective unless accompanied by a total 
change of environment and association, and even 
under the best conditions the drunkard fre- 
quently returns to his former habits. The 
Keeley Cure, while it has done some good, has 
not proven effective against this strongest of 
demons. Confinement in retreats for a year or 
more is probably the most effective of present 
methods in popular use, yet this method is not 
without its serious objections aside from the 
limitations of success of the treatment. It is 
an exceedingly serious thing to take the average 
man from his work and subject him to a year of 
idleness. The cure of intemperance may be ac- 
companied by evils no less disastrous than the 
disease cured. If the results achieved by the 
religious conversion could be supplemented by 
some other force, or if some method could be dis- 
covered to make the force of religion continuous, 



[34] 

it would seem that the most effective method of 
treatment might be obtained. In the belief that 
this may be obtained by the use of suggestion in 
the treatment of alcoholism, this chapter is 
offered to serious inquirers into this problem. 
The writer does not give merely his own opinions, 
but the conclusions which have been reached and 
for several years practised by many physi- 
cians in England, France, Germany, Russia, 
and elsewhere. 

The dipsomaniac may be easily distinguished 
from the ordinary drunkard. The latter usu- 
ally drinks continuously and with no desire to 
stop. The dipsomaniac drinks only at intervals 
and because he cannot help it. After a long 
period of abstinence he begins to be haunted 
with the desire for drink. At first he fights 
heroically against this desire, and then it be- 
comes irresistible. The torture of the craving 
is so great that it must be satisfied at any cost. 
But his conscience and his will do not cease to 
struggle, and he determines to take only one 
drink and not give way to one of his much- 
dreaded drunken bouts. As soon, however, as 
he takes the first glass the desire increases, and 
in despair he abandons all struggle. He then 
drinks in excess for a period varying from one 
day to weeks, when the craving disappears. 
This spree is followed not only by physical ill- 
ness, but also by mental anguish and remorse. 
These conditions in turn disappear and the 
patient enjoys a period of health and happiness 
until a new attack begins, which follows the 
course of its predecessors. 

We may call the conduct of an ordinary 
drunkard a sin, but the action of this dispo- 



[35] 

maniac is the result of a disease, — a disease of 
the will which renders him incapable of overcom- 
ing the desire to drink. We call him a victim of 
habit. This means that his constant indulgence 
in a habit leads inevitably to its accomplishment 
when the first of a train of events ordinarily pre- 
ceding it occurs. A feeling of mental inertia, of 
sinking in the stomach, or of dryness of the 
mouth have so often led him to drink that we 
can predict his line of conduct when opportunity 
for indulgence is offered, as truly as we can 
predict the physical and mental conditions that 
are to follow as the result of the germs of 
typhoid. His freedom of will has been de- 
stroyed, and his conduct, which follows certain 
stimuli, is the inevitable result of certain causes. 

Now a genuine conversion becomes an effect- 
ive cure for this man by opening new fields of 
interest of sufficient emotional intensity to over- 
come or to counterbalance the causes of the 
desire to indulgence, and so long as these new 
fields of interest maintain sufficient intensity the 
desire for drink may be defeated. Unfortu- 
nately, however, in only a comparatively small 
number of cases can this be accomplished, while 
with multitudes the purely religious impulse 
from its emotional side makes no appeal. It is 
with these classes that suggestion used under 
proper conditions, supplemented by moral and 
religious instruction, may accomplish all and 
even more than may be realized by the violent 
conversion. 

The mind in the waking state has been com- 
pared by Tarchanoff to a room into which rays 
of light are entering from all sides. The re- 
sult is a general illumination, without promi- 



[36] 

nence being given to any one ray. If the room is 
darkened and through a small opening a single 
ray is allowed to pass, it shines with exagger- 
ated force and brilliancy. The mind in its 
normal state is like the room receiving rays 
from every direction. It is busy receiving, 
weighing, and registering all ideas and sensa- 
tions which come to it from many sources. If, 
however, the mind is made calm, passive, vacant, 
and then one idea is permitted to enter it, it 
comes with greater force and brilliancy. It not 
only works its way into consciousness, but comes 
to dominate consciousness. There is in this state 
no weighing of evidence, no balancing of one 
idea against another, the result being that the 
idea which enters the mind becomes an uncon- 
trollable and irresistible impulse. Tell a drunk- 
ard in his normal state that he will be able to 
overcome the desire to drink and all his past 
experiences will rise in his mind to combat your 
suggestion and render it of no value. Tell the 
same man in a state where he is especially sus- 
ceptible to suggestion that whisky is a strong 
emetic and, though it may be his favorite glass, 
he will instantly reject it with disgust. 

We have already seen how men become sick 
by permitting an idea of sickness to enter their 
minds unchallenged, without any critical analy- 
sis, until that idea comes to dominate their 
consciousness, becomes a fixed idea which they 
cannot reject, and brings with it a whole train 
of diseases. On the same principle a diseased 
mind ruled by an uncontrolled desire for drink 
may, through suggestion, be put under the con- 
trol of a good idea, until that good idea casts 
out everything bad and rules life, enabling man 



[37] 

to do what he would and to turn from what he 
hates as did Paul after the re-creation of his 
consciousness by the mighty passion of love for 
Christ. 

This alone, however, is not enough to account 
for all that has been accomplished by sugges- 
tion. It must be supplemented by the theory of 
which Frederick Myers was one of the first and 
clearest exponents. According to him the re- 
sults of suggestion are achieved by the action 
of the secondary or subliminal self. Every man 
is in possession of forces of which he is seldom 
conscious, because they do not emerge into what 
we call consciousness, that is, the realm of our 
awareness, yet they are forces which are deter- 
mining to a large degree our health and happi- 
ness, and may be used to supplement our 
struggles and enforce our desires. These forces 
are reached through the avenue of suggestion 
and are utilized in a man's fight with the desire 
for drink. 

To be sure, this process is not so simple as 
is made to appear by this concise statement of 
the theory. All treatment must be preceded by 
an intense desire and willingness on the part of 
the patient to be cured. Suggestion is not a 
process by which one mind is made to dominate 
another. Rather, it is only a means of en- 
abling a man to control himself by educating 
his will and by calling into being the better ele- 
ments of his nature. If a man is thoroughly 
degenerate, it is very doubtful whether anything 
can be done for him. This being time, the first 
condition of all success is in the active coopera- 
tion of the patient, and this is by no means easy 
to secure. This is the reason why the cure of 



[38] 

the ordinary drunkard is so difficult. He does 
not want to be cured. 

In dipsomania the treatment ought to begin 
just after a drunken bout and aim at preventing 
or at least weakening another attack. The 
greatest care should be taken in the management 
of the patient, especially during the early part 
of the treatment. If possible, he should not be 
left alone, but have near him some trustworthy 
person to whom he can speak of his temptations 
and turn to him for assistance to overcome them. 
The operator must have infinite patience and 
not be easily discouraged. Many patients will 
relapse more than once during treatment. Even 
when the treatment seems to be very successful 
and the desire for drink quickly disappears, the 
patient should be treated regularly for a month 
or more. If he can be seen from time to time 
for six months so much the better. The dis- 
taste for alcohol ought to be suggested as well 
as the disappearance of the craving for it. The 
patient ought to be made to understand that he 
can never be a moderate drinker. He must 
make his choice between total abstinence and the 
gutter. Furthermore, he must turn from his 
old associations so far as possible, as they are 
a constant suggestion for the return of the 
disease. Even under these conditions, we can- 
not hope for cure in every case. The cure will 
depend partly upon the degree of susceptibility 
to suggestion and, even under the best condi- 
tions, no authority will make the exaggerated 
claims for it that were made for the Keeley Cure. 

Dr. Lloyd Tuckey, of London, thinks that 
fifty per cent of the cases may be cured. Dr. M. 
Bramwell does not commit himself to any fig- 



[39] 

ures, but believes that suggestion offers the 
best method of treatment for this disease. He 
records cases which have refrained from all in- 
toxicating drinks for twenty years. Dr. Bush- 
nell records the results of his treatment of 
twenty-three patients, of whom eight were cured, 
eight continued their habits, while seven were lost 
from his knowledge, having removed elsewhere. 
In Russia, where drunkenness is a national peril, 
clinics have been established for the treatment 
of alcoholism by suggestion in Moscow, Kiev, 
St. Petersburg, and a number of other large 
cities both in the north and south of Russia. 
During a period of six months 600 persons 
were treated by Dr. Oscar Orlitzky, of Moscow, 
and he reports success in fifty per cent of the 
cases. In the city of Ekaterinoslaff Dr. Jaon- 
sailoff treated in six months 387 patients, and 
reports enthusiastically on the results achieved, 
though he gives no exact figures. Dr. Tokar- 
sky, of Moscow, treated during a period of thir- 
teen years 700 cases, and reports the cure of 
eighty per cent of those who came to him with 
the desire to be cured. 

It must be noted that these men used sugges- 
tion without any appeal to the religious motives. 
For the most part they are not distinctly reli- 
gious men. When this treatment is combined 
with all that religion has to offer it seems rea- 
sonable to believe that we could hope for a cure 
of a very large percentage of the cases. 

We do not mean to imply by what we have 
written that this treatment of alcoholism should 
be undertaken by the minister apart from the co- 
operation of the physician. Indeed, many cases 
would result in failure unless accompanied by a 



[40] 

careful course of physical treatment. Where 
indulgence has resulted in organic changes in 
the heart, kidneys, or liver, the physical is quite 
as important as the mental treatment, and in 
many cases where a precarious state of health 
has been induced it is necessary to keep up the 
strength of the patient and to supply a sub- 
stitute for the alcohol upon which the system 
has fed. The minister and the physician are 
both necessary to assure success, and even with 
their combined efforts failure must result in some 
cases. 

Neither do we imply that every minister 
should equip himself for this work. All we 
argue is that this is a legitimate work for the 
Church because it is in the realm of the moral 
and spiritual, that the Church cannot be excused 
if it fails to use every means science has placed 
at its disposal for the removal of this awful dis- 
ease. Possibly one minister for each town, or 
one for each district in a city, could supply the 
need. Certainly whoever undertakes such work 
should be well equipped not only by the reading 
of a few books recommended by some one at 
the close of his lecture, but by the most thor- 
ough course of study and training under the 
best psychologists. If a few men would under- 
take such a task the work and usefulness of the 
Church would be greatly augmented in every 
community. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRKS 




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